108 Of The Most Persuasive Words In The English Language you Will Want To Ensure You Use In Sales Copy

According to legendary advertising man, Leo Burnet, “Dull and over exaggerated ad copy is due to the excess use of adjectives.” To prove it, he asked his staff to compare the number of adjectives in the 62 ads that had failed to the number of adjectives in Lincoln’s Gettysberg Address, and other age old classics.

Here’s What they discovered.

Of the 12,758 words in the 62 Ads that failed, 24.1% were adjectives. By direct comparison,Lincoln’s Gettysberg Address contained only 35 Adjectives out of 268 immortal words – only 13.1% adjective-to-total-word ratio. Winston Churchill’s famous “Blood Sweat and Tears” speech rates even lower and has a 12.1 adjective ratio (81 adjectives from 667 words).

Leo found that similar ratios applied to great works such as The Lords Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the preamble to the US Constitution.

Conclusion:

Use more verbs not adjectives. Verbs increase pulling power and believability of ad copy.

That’s why it makes sense to print out and keep this 108-VERB “CHEAT-SHEET” close-by whenever you begin to draft your next newspaper ad, direct mail sales letter, web site, eBay listing or email campaign.